About us

Standish Voice was created at a public meeting in July, 2014, in the wake of Wigan Council’s planning committee agreeing to a number of housing schemes for the village.

In the first half of 2014, outline permission was granted for around 1,200 homes in Standish.

Standish Voice believes the building of these new homes will bring major challenges for the village, but could also bring opportunities, and local people need to have a say in the planning and delivery of these estates.

Wigan Council has acknowledged that substantial infrastructure investment is needed to ensure the new homes fit in with the existing community and Standish Voice will fight to get the funding which is needed.

Standish needs a strong voice, which is why we applied to become a Neighbourhood Forum. Our application was successful and now we are the first statutory body representing the whole of Standish for more than 40 years.

A Neighbourhood Forum has the power to create a Neighbourhood Plan for the village, which will be a blueprint for the improvement of our community over the next generation.

We want Standish people to be at the heart of shaping that plan and will be consulting widely in order to do that.

We also believe the community spirit within Standish needs to be enhanced and we will be publicising and organising events to help do that.

Standish Voice also wants to be an ‘umbrella’ organisation for all the great clubs and groups in already in Standish by bringing them together when necessary and publicising the great work they do.

Please help us by becoming a member (you can sign up on this website or can do so at one of our meetings), give us your opinions, become part of the committee when we have a vacancy or join one of our sub-groups.

Above all, Standish Voice believes Standish is, at heart, a great place in which to live and work – and, with your help, it can become even better!

Standish Voice will hold its Annual General Meetings in January. The next AGM is in January, 2019. From then, five posts on the committee and any which become vacant during the year, will be up for election. If you want to stand as a committee member, please read our constitution, and talk to us about how you can contribute.

Click on the links to read our constitution and our values. Our constitution was altered at the 2017 AGM. You can read about those changes here.

Committee

Currently, the 15-person committee, who serve a maximum three-year term with cycles beginning in January, 2018, is:

Gill Foster – chair

Paul Ogden – vice chair

Karen Bliss – treasurer

Ron Wade – membership secretary

Fran Aiken

Janet Monks

Sarah Djali

Jaime Jones

Rev Andrew Holliday

Dave King

Brian Jones

Nic Macmillian

Nicky Ogden

Allan Foster

Diane Gore

To get in touch with us, email standishneighbourhoodforum@gmail.com

Facebook Policy updated

Up until, March 21, 2017, our policy has been to only delete comments which included libel, swearing or racism. We will now delete comments that are abusive, overly aggressive or totally untrue. We will decide this.

A debate will be welcomed but this needs to be done in a respectful manner. Standish Voice wants people to challenge our policies on the forthcoming Neighbourhood Plan. We want a discussion to get it right and we will defend these policies where necessary.

But we will not tolerate people making untrue or derogatory about Standish Voice as a whole. We have 900 members and 15 of them are on our committee. We are all volunteers who want the best for Standish and put in lots of hard work to make the village better for everyone. We will not have those volunteers being vilified.

We are even more concerned that people are making personal attacks on our Facebook page against members of the public who use the site. This will stop.

Standish Then And Now employs a policy of banning people who it believes are abusive, are overly personal or are aggressive. Standish Voice will now also employ this policy.

People we believe have breached these rules will be warned and then banned if they continue. If the breach is bad enough they will be banned outright. If a comment is deleted, that is a warning. Other comments of a less serious nature are ‘hidden’ in line with Facebook’s regulations.

Standish Voice has 6,014 people following its Facebook page (March 2018). We will not let a handful of people poison it for all the others. We live in a community and we need to respect each other.

As of March 19, 2018, only four people have been banned from commenting on the page.

Standish Voice will also use Question And Answer sessions to put over information, primarily about the Neighbourhood Plan, to make sure truthful information is given out.

Other websites and individuals are putting out highly misleading views and we want our Facebook followers to have the correct information.

Q&As will be for a set time and only one comment or statement will be allowed to give time for us to respond properly. Any other comments, or comments made out of the set time, will be deleted. People will be warned if they abuse this.

UPDATED JUNE 12, 2018

Accounts

Below, are Standish Voice’s accounts, with the latest accounts presented at our AGM of November 15, 2017.

If you have any questions about the accounts, please contact our Treasurer, Karen Bliss, via our email address, standishneighbourhoodforum@gmail.com